After a late night, we slept in a little bit until 9 am. Well me and Claire did. Stacy was awoken by Nick packing his suitcase. She really loved him by the end of the trip. We dropped off our bags in the luggage room, checked out and headed out on the town, in search of coffee and something to eat that wasn't straight carbs. We found a Mickey D's which sufficed our desires for a coffee and a chocolate muffin. We walked back towards the Trevi fountain and stopped to get the necessary postcards and to stop in a few cute shops. We wanted lunch before getting on our train, so we found a cute little cafe in this little alley. After some delish four cheese pasta, we headed back to our hostel taking a random route through the alleys. I am a big fan of taking new ways home, and exploring the different parts of the city. Luckily my sense of direction usually gets us from Point A to Point B with little problem. We got our luggage, checked our email quick, and headed to the train station.
Murphy's law of traveling. No matter how much time you allote, you are always running for a plane, train, etc. We had like 30 minutes to get our tickets and get on our train, but after we got our tickets and searched for our track (ofcourse it was like some random one) we literally had 5 minutes to get to our train. Make that 3. Skip to us running down the platform, dragging our suitcases, to finally make it on our train with approximately 42 seconds to spare. Search for seats, sweating, hot, carrying our luggage. Full train. Dumb Asian girls who wouldn't move their luggage so we could sit down. Finally found a seat, sat down, turned on my Ipod and relaxed and cooled down. Eventually we were able to move all together so we could nap and enjoy our 4 hour train ride to Florence.
The train ride was absolutely beautiful. The hills were so green and leafy and I just wanted to wander through the fields, find some grapes, drink some wine, soak up the sun. We got to Florence on time, followed the directions to our hostel and found the Ciao Hostel with no problem..convienently located on Guido Street. Kid you not. Our room was super nice, 4 beds to ourselves, even clean free towels. Ah the luxurious life.
We headed out for some dinner and after a failed attempt at the place the hostel recommended (it was closed) we found a cute little place full of grandparents. For dinner: probably the best tuscan ravoli I've ever had. We headed towards the Arno River to enjoy the lovely Firenze evening and to meet up with a friend from high school. The funny thing about being abroad is that you rekindle old relationships or making new relationships solely based on the fact that you are both abroad and thousands of miles from home. Lydia, who went to Mundelein with me and haven't seen since, is studying in Florence and when she saw I was coming, she offered to show us around. We wandered through the streets and we loved Florence already. Live music, cute little streets, it reminded us of Prague, with lots of gelato. We met Lydia at the Ponte Vecchio Bridge which is what I picture the London Bridge to be like (prior to it falling down and all). It had enclosed shops on the bridge and little shutters on the outside. So cute.
Lydia took us to a little gelato shop in a back alley and we sat on the steps of the Duomo to enjoy it and avoid the creepy Italian men and random vendors selling roses and bracelets, etc. We also made friends with this group of American parents who wanted to talk to us as soon as they heard our American accents and to tell us to have fun and be safe. We also rubbed the Firenze Boar to insure another speedy return to Italy, this time to Florence. Favorite part is that when we took Claire's photo by the boar some random woman called her a "ham". Accurate, yes. Random, yes. Typical, yes. We enjoyed the gelato and caught up on 3 years of life. We ran into a friend of Lydia's...a flamboyant Italian guy who was really nice and humorous. We bid farewell then went home for a shower and bed. Good night.
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